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Dessert

Meringue Pudding

A sweet pudding made from stale bread crumbs, milk, sugar, lemon, eggs, topped with fruit jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Meringue Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the bread crumbs and milk together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

Top and serve

  1. When cold, spread the top with fruit jelly.

  2. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  3. Gradually add the powdered sugar and lemon juice to the egg whites.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  5. Brown the meringue in the oven.

  6. Serve with cream.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and form the soft, starchy body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it with richness and a smooth set.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and sets with the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Brown the meringue in the oven. Egg white meringue must be baked only until golden; over-baking makes it weep and turn tough, while under-baking leaves it soft and sticky.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More meringue pudding recipes

Lemon 32Apple 22Cream 9Chocolate 8Rice 5Cornstarch 4 See all 31 →

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